Transparency in Production Agriculture

With the vast majority of today’s consumers having absolutely no connection to production agriculture, the disconnect to where our food and fiber comes from and how it is produced has never been greater.

Agricultural producers are finally realizing that agriculture’s story needs telling, and it needs to be told by the producers in the industry.“We’re several generations removed from the production side of it, and so now we’ve got consumers that don’t understand the production of it.”

“Because of the information age that we’re in, you see some misinformation that’s spread out there as well, and misinformation today can spread just as easily as true information, and so what we have seen is that consumers want transparency now. They want to know how their food is being produced.”

Many times critics of production agriculture don’t tell the full story.

“Often times there’s pictures shown of feed lot operations and the cattle are all kind of gathered together, and critics say well, we’re just packing them into the feeding operation and that’s not good for them. In reality, if you take an aerial view of the pen, and you can do this with Google Earth, and you look down upon it, what you see is, the cattle, there’s all kind of room out there, but they get all together. Cattle are herders, I mean they want to be together.”

Texas A&M Agrilife Extension specialists are currently working with a large retailer to educate their meat market managers.

“So when the consumer comes up there and asks, well, what goes into producing this steak, they have the confidence to say, well this is the production cycle, and here’s some additional resources if you want to know. I think that transparency will continue and we produce a safe, wholesome product, we just need to tell the consumer about it.”

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